


Algeō

by Imagine_Darksiders



Category: Darksiders (Video Games)
Genre: Bullying, Claustrophobia, F/M, Female Reader, Human/Monster Romance, Human/ghost, Lonely monster, Possessive Behavior, Separation Anxiety, Spectre - Freeform, Terato, Teratophilia, snake bite - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-13 02:00:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16883493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagine_Darksiders/pseuds/Imagine_Darksiders
Summary: It’s Halloween and you’re on your way home from a party when you run into someone who needs your help. You follow them to a manor house on the edge of your university town and discover something lurking deep within the basement. It takes a liking to you.Algeō -  ‘I am cold.’‘I am neglected (left in the cold).’





	1. ShadowBrook House

**Author's Note:**

> Darksiders AU; in which Death defied the Charred Council and as punishment, they exiled him to Earth and cursed him to take on his Reaper Form. Reaper is Death’s antithesis.

Nobody goes near the dilapidated manor house that haunts the woods on the outskirts of town. 

Everyone knows that. All the students on  _campus_  know it. The local kids too. Even the homeless won’t go near it and stray dogs will actively avoid the area altogether. 

When you moved into the neighbourhood a few weeks ago to begin your first year at Sculborough University, you’d been fairly underwhelmed by the supposed ‘urban legends’ surrounding ShadowBrook House, the most popular of which tells the tale of a dreadful monster that lurks deep in the bowels of the abandoned manor.   
Unfortunately for the veritable thespian who recounted the legend to you one afternoon at the Students’ Union cafe, you’ve long since stopped believing in things that go bump in the night, bogeymen or monsters. Nowadays, reality offers far more abhorrent things for you to worry about. 

Still, following the conversation, intrigued by the prospect of uncovering the town’s secret, bloody history, you conducted come light research and came to a disappointing conclusion; there’s absolutely nothing even  _remotely_  sinister about ShadowBrook. No mysterious disappearances. No reports of inexplicable deaths, nor eerie voices that whisper to those brave souls who dare to venture inside and not a single newspaper clipping from the past that claims the previous owners died under cryptic circumstances.   
No. Truth be told, that lonely old manor house sitting in the woods at the edge of town is just that.   
A house. 

And yet….despite your skepticism, it’s difficult to deny the cold shiver that dances up and down your spine each time you travel to and from your halls of residence, a journey that always takes you past those black, wrought iron gates that mark the start of a long, gravel driveway and creak noisily on their hinges each time a breeze rolls in. 

That’s where you find yourself tonight, striding briskly down the dimly lit lane at one in the morning on your return from a halloween rave at a club in town. One o’clock may have been a pathetically early time to retire for a student who’s supposed to be enjoying their first year, especially on Halloween, but it’s a wednesday, and you have a lecture in the morning that you’d rather not miss. 

An icy wind nips at your heels as you walk, prompting you to turn up the collar of your thick, woollen coat and stuff your hands into the pockets. The sky is dark as ink, covered by a thick blanket of grey clouds heralding the coming snow and there isn’t a single moonbeam to penetrate the shadowed stretches of road that can’t be reached by streetlights. Every now and then, you pass by another lonely night-owl who comments on your choice of costume, you thank them, return a word or two, and then you both go on your merry ways.   
This year, you’d elected for the classic skeleton look; A black dress with a white ribcage painted on for decoration, red kitten heels and thick, black tights, on account of the freezing cold. To top everything off, you’d given your face a full, skeletal makeover. Nothing too fancy. Just a simple, grinning skull done using white paint and a  _lot_  of black eyeshadow. 

To your right, the woods loom out of the darkness, not unlike a colossal tidal wave that’s come to the height of its climb and is suspended in an eternal interlude above the little houses across the street.

You shudder violently as you trot along the low, brick wall that spans this length of road and disappears back into the woods to surround the manor; a wall meant to keep the world out although it  _does_  sometimes feel as though it’s the other way around, like those eroded, paltry bricks are the only barrier between the town and whatever stalks the grounds of ShadowBrook.   
Tree trunks creak and groan in the stiff breeze and low-hanging branches stretch out over the wall to claw and snatch at your hair. In the distance, you pick up the familiar screech of metal gates dragging against their hinges, a sound so shrill, it sets your teeth on edge and can be heard over the scratching and skittering of dead leaves as they swirl around on the concrete at your feet. 

Soon enough, the iron guardians themselves appear further up the road, swinging open invitingly after a particularly strong gust of wind, presumably to entice you through them into the depths of the wild woods. 

Whatever lock might have once kept the horrors of that woodland at bay has long since rusted into nonexistence. Perhaps you’ve been too caught up in the spirit of the holiday, but there’s an inkling of trepidation trickling down your throat and settling uncomfortably in your stomach as you approach the gates, and it’s only a sense of pride that keeps you from running, or crossing to the other side of the road. You refuse to be intimidated by a hunk of bent, rusty metal, after all. That would certainly be a new low. 

Keeping your head bowed low against the chilly wind, you pick up the pace and try to hurry by. 

However, just as you make it halfway across, right when your foot lines up perfectly with the gap left between each gate, something causes the blood to freeze in your veins and your body snaps upright, rigid and alert, your eyes as wide as saucers. For out in the darkness, carried like an echo on the wind,  _some_ one calls your name. 

It was loud enough to be heard above the shrieking metal, causing your heart to leap up into your throat when the sound is quickly followed by an unmistakable crunching of shoes hitting gravel. In an instant, your tongue becomes glued to the roof of your mouth and you hurry to clamp a hand around the phone in your pocket. The footsteps are pounding steadily closer, fast and unmeasured, as though the person they belong to is in a tremendous hurry. Swallowing down your rattling heart, you pause to gather a few shreds of courage and let out a steadying exhale, cranking your head around to peer through the gate into the heavily shadowed driveway. 

Just as you’re debating whether to flee, call the police or fall to the ground and go foetal, a figure suddenly bursts out of the darkness and crashes into the gate at full tilt, a bone-white face barely illuminated by the feeble light of a nearby street lamp. 

You almost want to sag with relief when you find that you actually  _recognise_ them. 

It’s Mia; a second year living across the hall from you.   
Panting raggedly, she clings to the bars and stares at you from between them, eyes as wild as her curly brown hair. 

“Mia!?” you squawk, staggering backwards as she stuffs herself through the gap and throws herself at you, nearly bowling you over in her haste. 

She gasps your name, clawing at your jacket. “Y/n! Thank God you’re here! I - I need your help!  _Please_!” As she speaks, she grabs your sleeve and begins to drag you frantically towards the gate. 

Bewildered and  _more_  than a little alarmed at her sudden appearance, you dig your heels in hard and grab her shoulder,  jerking her to a clumsy stop. “Woah! Hey! You scared me half to death, what’re you  _doing_  out in the woods!?” 

But the girl only shakes her head and urgently tugs on your arm. “No time! It’s Zack! He-”

“Wh- Hang on. Zack? Who’s Zack?” 

“He’s my little brother!” she wails. 

With that, your anxious expression drops into something a bit more resolute, the image of a child in danger sobering your fear. 

Swiping a few fingers under her eyes, Mia continues shakily, “Charlie dared him to go into ShadowBrook!”

“Charlie  _who_?” you demand, wary that she’s managed to squeeze back through the gates and that her hand is still very much adhered to yours like its been superglued in place. 

She looks back at you, a troubled knowingness flashing across her face as she bites her lip and sighs, “Charlie Squall..” 

Her answer draws an exasperated groan from your throat. 

Charlie Squall.  _Every_  town has a Charlie Squall. A bully and a troublemaker who’s quicker to start a fight than he is to finish one. He’s another second year, like Mia, only with a mean streak a mile long and isn’t adverse to making anyone’s life difficult. Waitresses, the homeless, other students, stray dogs and now - apparently - children. And the worst part is, his father is the Head of Department at the University and a senior member on the county council, a combination that renders Charlie nigh untouchable. Not to mention he’s savvy enough to keep his antics  _mostly_  non violent. Everything is loud and verbal with him, or he’ll pull elaborate schemes on first years that he plays off as harmless pranks if someone dobs him in. 

He also happens to be on the same course as you,  _and_  he lives in the halls directly adjacent to yours. You’ve so far been fortunate enough to evade his ire, but you’ve caught him scrutinising you over a computer in the library or whispering to a friend in the canteen and making deliberate eye-contact with you for the past few weeks. Although you’ve done your best to ignore him, you can’t shake the feeling that he has something in store. Now it looks like he’s decided to torment a weaker target for a while, perhaps having grown bored of thinking up ways to antagonise you. Mia’s little brother. 

Speaking of whom…

You at last stop resisting Mia’s insistent yanks and allow her to tug you through the gates with only a smidgen less trepidation than before. 

Once you’re through, she releases your jacket and dashes off down the gravel drive, digging out her phone and turning on the torch with a few swipes of her thumb. In seconds, the bobbing light is already fast disappearing into the darkness of the woods. 

“Mia!” you call, following suit and lighting up your own phone before tearing after her at a full sprint, “Wait up!” 

She only slows down a fraction to let you catch up, though not enough to actually draw level with her. “Come on!” she shouts, “He’s badly hurt!”

“Hurt!!” Renewed by a sense of urgency, you put on another burst of speed. “What happened!?” 

“I saw Charlie talking to Zack earlier this morning, said he’d buy my brother a video game cartridge if he went into the manor’s basement and fetched a bottle of some vintage wine that’s supposed to be down there! But there’s - there’s termites all in the wood and the floor above the basement just gave out under him when he went in the house! He fell right through!” 

“Oh shit!” you exclaim, panting, “Well, did you call an ambulance!? He might have broken a leg or something!” 

“I-yeah! Of course I did!” she calls back, “But they said they’re gonna take a while!” 

“Seriously? Well…Where’s Charlie?!” You stumble over a tree root but manage to keep your footing, scowling at the ground for impeding your progress. 

“He… ran off,” Mia replies after a pregnant pause, though she may have just been trying to catch her breath. Talking and running is hard, after all. 

“I followed them here and saw Zack fall, but when I asked Charlie to help, he booked it!”

At that moment, a cloud shifts and a moonbeam bursts through the space left by it, shining down on the woods. The looming face of Shadow Brook suddenly surges into view and the trees that line the driveway thin out, spreading left and right to encircle an enormous, cobblestone courtyard, eerie and sinister and bathed in silvery moonlight. 

Without hesitation, Mia darts ahead and slips through the front doors of the manor, vanishing inside. 

You, however,  _do_  hesitate. Stumbling to a halt before you reach the entrance, your hand poised over the large, wooden doorknob, a shudder rolls down your spine. 

Something….doesn’t feel right. 

Before you can dwell on it for too long, you hear Mia’s frantic yelp coming from inside. “Zack!” she screams, “Y/n’s here! Just hold on, we’re coming!”

The thought of a kid being down in a cold, dark basement in a supposedly haunted house spurs you into motion. Your bleeding heart aches desperately for him. 

Sucking in a deep breath, you set your jaw and level a hard glare up at the stone gargoyle sitting above the door, leering down at you around a ferocious, carved grin. “It’s just a house,” you sternly remind yourself, “All bricks and glass and dust. No ghosts…” You place your hand on the door. “And  _definitely_. No. Monsters….” 

Heart in your throat and fingers trembling around the knob, you shove the thick front doors open and step inside after Mia.

Darkness greets you on the other side like a blanket, wrapping around, above and below your phone’s meagre torchlight, which struggles valiantly to beat the shadows back and keep your visibility clear. You pass the light over an extravagant, albeit dusty entrance hall. A small gasp parts your lips, awed by the sweeping grand staircase and the chandelier that’s clearly fallen from the ceiling at some point and came to a rest halfway up the steps, its pieces strewn about haphazardly, each tiny fragment of glass glinting like thousands of ominous eyes as your light hits them.

“Mia!?” you hiss as loudly as you dare, creeping across the hall towards a half-open door at the far side. “Mia, where d'you go?”

All of a sudden, her voice calls out to you from beyond the hall loud enough to make your heart skip several beats. “Down here! The basement is this way!”

“Wait!  _Which_  way!?” you reply to her voice, tripping over broken chairs and slipping on shattered glass before staggering through the door and finding yourself in a long corridor. Rows of paintings line the walls, each depicting a sour-faced man or steely-eyed woman from various periods of time. Their piercing glares seem to follow you as you tiptoe cautiously along, phone still held out in front of you like a weapon and your breaths coming in rapid little gasps.

No doubt about it. You can be as skeptical as you like but  _nobody_  could deny that there’s something irrevocably unsettling about walking around ShadowBrook after nightfall.

At that moment, just as you’re passing by another open door, a bone-rattling, ear-splitting scream rips through the manor, emanating from somewhere below you. It’s incoherent, but undeniably  _Mia_.

Jumping out of your skin, you whirl towards the sound and bellow her name, fuelled by worry now, rather than fear.

You fly through the door and immediately almost trip down a flight of stairs, righting yourself just in time to catch your footing and hold the light as steady as you can, lest you trip and end up a mangled heap at the bottom, leaving Mia with  _two_  problems to deal with.

Down, down and down, deeper and deeper into the belly of the manor you descend, until you finally start to question just how probable it is for a staircase to travel this far underground. Suddenly, your phone lights upon the bottom step and beyond that, you spot another pair of doors, huge and metal. They stand wide open, twice your height and just as long, like a gaping maw that’s just waiting for you to finish your frantic descent so it can swallow you whole and seal you in.

’ _That has to be where Zack and Mia are_!’ you think, leaping down the last three steps and bolting right through the entrance, shining your light around a cavernous, square room. “Zack?” you call out, taking a tentative few steps away from the door and moving towards the farthest wall, sweeping the torch from left to right, searching for a sign of either your hall-mate or her little brother. It’s cold down here. Colder than it had been outside, and each breath you comes out in a cloud. 

“Hello?” The basement is sparse. Nearly completely devoid of furnishings. Save for a shelf unit on the far wall and a few, scattered planks of wood, you can’t see that there’s anyone down here, there certainly isn’t anywhere for an injured child to hide. “Guys, where are-!”

All of a sudden, you’re cut off by a deafening, metallic screech, followed closely by the slamming of heavy doors.

An icy cold weight that has nothing to do with the room’s temperature settles like lead in your gut. Whipping about, you dart back to the door and stop in front of it. Perhaps….a breeze?….

Gulping, you push against it, leaning your whole weight against the cool metal when it refuses to budge. “Uh.” Push down the rising panic. Push it down. “Mia? The..the door closed!…Mia!? Are you out there? I can’t see your brother in here!”

A few beats of silence pass, broken by your increasingly raspy breaths, Then, right as the dreaded panic urges you to pound your fists on the door, a faint, muffled chuckle rings through the tiny gap left between the bottom and the floor.

Alongside it, another laugh, this one higher and daintier and you distinctly hear Mia chirp, “What did I tell you? Easy?”

“Mia!?” you blurt, pressing your ear to the metal.

“Nice. You’d make a pretty decent actress..” A man replies, his distinctive voice – scratchy and nasally – stops you breathing altogether.

“Ch-Charlie!?”

A shuffle comes from the other side. “Ah, hey Y/n! Welcome to your official initiation!”

Bewildered, you sputter out, “Initiation? But.. But what about Zack!? What the _Hell_  is going on!?”

Charlie Squall; Sculborough’s bane, laughs brusquely and says to Mia, “Oh, you pulled the little brother stint this time?”

She sighs gleefully, patting the door. “Duh. Y/n’s a sap. There’s no  _way_  she’d leave a kid down here. And we don’t know each other well enough for her to know I don’t  _have_  a brother.”

Wave upon wave of dawning horror laps at your heart and you kick the door, hoping it'l just fly open with enough force. “What are you talking about? Let me out of here! This isn’t funny!”

“Maybe not from where  _you’re_  standing,” comes Charlie’s muted reply, “Listen, every fresher has to go through a trial. It’s tradition. This is yours,” he explains nonchalantly, as If he’s commenting on the weather. “You know, you got off easier than most first years. Maggie Hake and Lance Green got gagged  _and_ blindfolded.”

“What kind of sick kicks do you get out of locking people up in abandoned basements!?” you rasp, fighting back another dizzying surge of anxiety.

“Jesus Christ, you’re a pussy. Just relax, kid. We’ll let you out in the morning.”

“No!” you yelp, eliciting a duo of quiet giggles from your tormentors, “You’ll let me out right  _now_! Come on, it’s  _freezing_  in here!”

You have to strain to hear Mia’s voice when she lowers it to a whisper. “Actually… _Are_  you sure about this Char? You’ve never brought anyone out  _here_ …” A flicker of hope ignites in your chest….

“Oh she’ll be fine.”

…and extinguishes just as quickly.

“After all,” he raises his voice for you to hear, “She’s got the ghosts to keep her company till morning! Oh,  _and_  the ShadowBrook Monster!”

Little does he know, it isn’t the ghost or monsters that bother you. Already, your brain is telling you that the air is becoming thinner and harder to breathe, as though the very walls are closing in on you from all sides. Thoughts of being trapped like a rat - of being buried alive - plague your imagination, festering there.

You hadn’t felt full-blown claustrophobia like this in several years. Then again, you’d never felt so out of control like this.

You begin to claw desperately at the door, tugging at the long handle and jerking it up and down manically, screaming after the retreating footsteps. “No, no, no, no! Please –  _SHIT_! LET ME OUT! I’m claustrophobic! I – I can’t be down here,  **I’ll** …I’ll!…”

“Holy shit, even Mackie J didn’t make this much fuss and I locked  _him_  in the  _morgue_  for a night!” Charlie laughs, “Come on, Y/n. Think of this as….therapy. You’ll work through your phobia, we’ll swing by to let you out in the morning and we’ll all have a big laugh about it…say…over coffee? Tomorrow at five?”

Slamming your shoulder into the metal, you raggedly snarl, “Go to Hell, Squall! I’m calling the police!”

All that you get in response is the sound of shrill laughter from both Mia and Charlie. It bounces down the stairs and filters under the door. “Good luck getting signal down here,” the former shouts smugly.

“Yeah!” Charlie adds, “and good luck getting them to care. It’s just a Uni prank, Y/n! Learn to take a joke!”

Apoplectic with rage, indignation and humiliation, you scream and bang and holler, wailing on the door until your face turns blue and the heels of your palms are numb. For what feels like hours, you yell yourself hoarse, shivering like a leaf in the wind before at last, you lose steam and collapse to the cold ground beside the door and draw your legs up to your chin, gulping down lungfuls of stale, dusty air. Your face is entirely drenched in tears, your once pristine skeleton makeup no doubt ruined, and a cold sweat trickles endlessly down your back. “I’m trapped!” you can’t stop muttering to yourself between gasping sobs, “I’m stuck underground in the woods in a basement and nobody’s gonna find me!…What if they don’t come back!? I’ll  _starve_! I’ll  _ **freeze**_ , I’ll-!”

Your petrified monologue grinds to a screeching halt when, from the other side of the room, a long, ghostly hiss slithers along the bare walls and encompasses you in layer upon layer of goosebumps. Then, slowly, it tapers off and the room grows quiet once again.

Sitting there with your hands clamped over your mouth, you choke on a muffled cry. “Oh,  _perfect_!” you squeak, moving your phone to the far corner where the sound had emanated from, “And there are snakes in here! Of  _course_!”

The new, potentially dangerous threat at least somewhat distracts you from your primary fear. You’d picked up enough about the local wildlife to know that these woods will be infested with adders. Not  _deadly_ , per se. But  _definitely_ venomous with a particularly painful bite that you’d rather avoid.

It had probably ventured inside to seek warmth to hibernate for the winter, and now you’d gone and woken it up, rendering you alone with a grumpy, sleepy,  _venomous_  snake. Wonderful.

“If –  _ **When**_  I get out of here, I’m gonna spit in Mia’s shampoo and punch Squall in the face…God it’s cold down here.”

Indeed, somehow the basement is frostier than the October air outside. Each breath leaves your lungs in giant puffs of white cloud, blowing past your phone light and obscuring your view of the basement with every exhale. It’s behind one of these clouds that you first think you see something move.

Your body locks up and you swallow down a sharp inhale, tucking your chin into your knees. The light from your phone only punctures so far into the darkness, but you could swear you caught the glimpse of a shadow flit across the room. A  _big_  shadow.

Too afraid to move, you stare, wide-eyed into the gloom. “Stop scaring yourself, there’s nothing there,” you breathe, “You’re just scared. Your mind’s playing tricks on-”

You nearly swallow your tongue when a pair of bright, white pinpricks of light flicker into existence, hovering close to edge of your phone’s torch, but not quite close enough for you to see who or  _what_  they belong to. Clammy hands tremble violently around the phone as you stare at the eyes. ’ _Maybe they’re not eyes at all,_ ’ you think, ever hopeful, ’ _maybe there’s a mirror back there, and it’s reflecting the light.._.’

That doesn’t explain why there are two of them though, side by side, but at this point, you’re ready to start grasping at straws. And then, the damned things move, shattering your reason and logic. You let out a whimper, mouth dropping open around a silent scream as the twin lights begin to grow, larger and brighter. At fist, you don’t register the implications of this, that is until you notice the outline of a colossal, black mass – darker than its surroundings – moving towards you through the gloom.   
It is  _big_. Categorically bigger than a human by a mile and the eyes – you can no longer deny that they are eyes – wink out briefly before appearing again, hanging at least fifteen feet above your head.

The scream that erupts out of you is powerful enough to hurt your jaw and the hulking, misshapen blotch of dark matter recoils, the pinpoint lights flickering several times and then retreating completely, vanishing deeper into the basement.

At the same time, you throw up the collar of your jacket and duck down into it, hugging your legs close and burying your face behind your knees. Something clatters to the ground at the far wall, and that same, soft hiss reaches you ears again, quieter this time, before falling silent again.

You’re on the verge of a breakdown – mental or otherwise – sitting on the floor whilst your whole body quivers, contracting and relaxing as you force yourself to breathe.

“There’s no such thing as monsters,” you squeak pitiably, clearing your throat so you can shout with more courage than you have, “I’m not scared of you!”

’ _Wow, I am a bad liar,_ ’ you note.

All that answers is your own echo and heartbeat pounding away in your ears. Yet you still can’t raise your head to look, even though it feels like you’re turning your back to the wolves, leaving yourself open and vulnerable to attack.

Whole minutes pass by, dragging on and on without incident until, eventually you start thinking you had imagined it after all.

Pump people with enough fear and keep them alone in the dark and their minds will show them  _terrible_  things.

It takes you another moment or two to work up enough courage so you can lift your head and peel your eyes open, shakily raising your phone up…….

……….only to immediately yelp and jump to your feet, slamming back into the hard door with a loud clang, your chest heaving up and down.

On the ground, right beside the toes of your shoes, is….what looks like a blue, argyle-patterned blanket. That had  _definitely_   **not**  been there before.   
Someone is down here with you.   
There’s not a doubt in your mind.

“H….Help..Help me..” you breathe to nobody, reaching behind yourself to feel for the handle. As soon as your fingers touch it, you spin around and start pulling furiously at the door, nearly tossing your phone aside to use both hands. “HEEEY!!” you bawl, “SOMEONE!? ANYONE!?  _Please_! Help me…” A strange thud has you tripping over your own feet in your haste to turn around and press your back flat to the door, torch held aloft and shivering.

Peering down to your shoes, you let out a whimper upon finding that the blanket has  _moved_  to rest mere inches from your curled toes. There’s even a square indent in it’s original spot where the dust had been disturbed, leaving no room for doubt. 

Whoever is in here with you had been right behind you and they hadn’t made a sound.

“Okay…” you huff and rake your fingers through your hair, “okay, okay. Let’s just….rationalise this for a sec.” Talking is your strong suit, and talking things through with yourself has helped ground you in the past, and you can think of no better situation in which you need grounding that this one.

Cautiously, you exhale, bending down to scoop the blanket into your arms with all the hesitancy of a deer stepping from the safety of its thicket.

You sling it around your shoulders, coughing and spluttering when years worth of dust escapes the scratchy fibres and tickles the back of your throat. If nothing else, at least you won’t freeze anymore. Holding the blanket in place with one hand, you raise the phone higher into the air when, all of a sudden, a thought strikes you, so obvious, you’re embarrassed it didn’t hit you before now.

What if this is all just  _part_  of the initiation? Your heart flutters as the idea grows. What if one of Charlie’s goons is down here to scare you until morning? He’d already roped Mia into his plans, so why not someone else. You certainly wouldn’t put it past Squall to do something so wicked. But having you freeze to death is probably a step too far, even for him. Thus, this mystery person had taken pity and given you a blanket.

“Yes!” you blurt out, warm relief bringing heat back into your cheeks. “Oh that makes  _so_  much more sense than monsters! Haha!”

Letting out a breathless laugh, you address the basement, taking a bold step away from the door. “You can stop hiding now! Did Charlie put you up to this? Is this funny to you as well? Do you  _like_  scaring people!?”

To your left, a mellow, guttural murmur gives away their position, so you shine your light in their direction triumphantly, jutting out your chin and clutching the blanket close. “Come on out then!” you command, though it’s little more intimidating than a mewl, “I’m not scared of you. Show yourself!”

Again, the quavering of your voice is far from convincing, though it’s miles better than screaming incoherently for help.

Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound save for your big, trembling inhales and exhales. Inch by inch, your garnered bravery begins to slip with every passing second, tension bordering on unbearable again. “Didn’t you hear me? I said-”  
Your eyes catch sight of something emerging from the dark. “I….said…” Teeth chattering, you roll your gaze up.

  
And up.

 

And further up _still_ until it stops, and you're suddenly blinking up into a pair of white, shining pinholes of dazzling light.

The blanket slips out of your grasp and flops to the ground at the same time as your phone, which lands with a much sharper, more worrisome ‘CRACK’ at your feet.

You were wrong. You were  _so_  wrong. In fact, you’re fairly sure you’ve never been more wrong about anything in your life.

 

The 'person’ down here is  _ **not**_  part of the initiation. You only have to look for a second to know that this isn’t smoke and mirrors. This is real. Too real.

At least you’d been right about one thing though. You  _aren’t_  scared.

You’re unequivocally, indisputably  _petrified_.

Your phone’s light flickers once, then dies, plunging you into cold, empty darkness. But in the few moments of illumination it gave you prior, you decided you’d seen enough.

Apparently, only a few strides is all it took to expose ShadowBrook’s secret.

A monster – that’s all it feasibly  _could_  be – stared back at you from beneath a shabby, purple hood, which it’s bent low, shoulders hunched even with the basement’s unusually high ceiling. Long, skeletal arms, devoid of any skin or muscle stretch out of a billowing robe that hangs several inches above the floor, each one ending in an enormous hand and fingers that are as long as you are tall. It has no visible legs, so far as you can tell, meaning the creature hovered over the stone floor, held aloft by a pair of gigantic wings, almost bat-like in appearance were it not for the lack of any membrane stretching between the bony digits. The moment your phone’s light dies, the monster waves it’s enormous hands through the air over two lanterns hanging from its leather belt and they start to emit a sinister green glow, casting the basement in sickly light.

You aren’t sure what’s worse. Being unable to see the monster or being  _able_  to see it.

You can merely stand there, rooted to the spot as a gentle gust of frigid air blows out from under that terrible hood and washes over your face, rustling hair and clothes alike. The gears in your brain that had ground to a halt upon seeing the haunting spectre promptly chug back into motion, jump started by your jackhammer heart.   
With a scream that would make Ann Darrow proud, you scramble backwards, away from the ghastly thing and spin around, crashing into the door. Unsurprisingly, it hadn’t magically opened of its own accord while you weren’t looking, but you still give the handle a good few pulls just in case.

At your back, you hear a strange rattling sound emanate from the monster’s throat, so you whirl about, startled to find that it’s gingerly clutching the blanket between its massive fingers and gliding over the ground, coming closer and closer until it’s almost upon you.

Frantic, you yelp and dart to the side, racing by the purple-clad horror show until you hit the far wall. In the ominous glow of its lanterns, you scour everywhere, finding the whole place frustratingly bare of anything you could use as a weapon. Only a few shelves line the walls, a plank of wood or two litter the floor. With a jolt, your eyes are drawn to a particular pile of broken planks scattered beside a hole in the ground, as though they’d been ripped up and tossed to the side in a hurry, which is ideal, because that’s exactly what  _you_  are in.

’ _Of course!_ ’ you almost cheer aloud, ‘ _Old house, plus high foundations, equals crawl space_!’

The problem, you find, is that even though your mind screams, ’ _Safety_!’ your body has other ideas. You have to fight pretty hard to convince it that jumping into a tight, unknowable hole in the ground is a better idea than staying up here. It’ll be pitch black in there….but in the end, fear of the haggard beast behind you negates your fear of enclosed spaces.

Groaning, you make a mad dash for the hole. As you do, the monster chitters, insect-like and urgent, swooping down on you. It’s hand snaps out to capture you, but just before it can, you drop onto your knees mid-dash, skidding along in the dust and dropping heavily into the crawlspace. The narrow escape draws an oddly anguished, spine-chilling wail from the spectre overhead and soon after, it plunges its hand in after you, probing around the spot you’d been crouching just milliseconds before. Its finger bones scratch rivets in the floor and stone walls.

Knowing that you’re far from safe, you blindly feel your way along, wondering just what in the Hell you’d gotten yourself into.

Unfortunately, you don’t make it very far before, without warning, a hiss catches your attention from somewhere directly in front of your face. ’ _That can’t be right_ ,’ you frown. The monster is still scrabbling about near the hole a mere few feet behind you, so what-

You give out a startled yelp when something smooth and cold slithers across your fingers and on the floor above, there’s a lull in motion where the monster pauses to clack it’s teeth together, agitated. Reacting instinctively, you fling your hand out and slide backwards, away from what you’re fairly certain is an actual snake…..

…..right into the monster’s grasp. 

Realising your mistake just a tad too late, you yelp and struggle as several sinewy fingers nudge into your back and frantically wrap around your thigh and calf, dragging you backwards to the hole’s entrance.

“NO!” you howl, and then, “OUCH!”

Pain lances up your arm when sharp fangs sink into the juncture between your thumb and forefinger, retracting as quickly as they come. Heart on the brink of exploding and your eyes bulging in their sockets, you tuck the wounded hand against your chest, using the other to claw at the ground, walls, pillars. Anything that’ll give you a few more moments of safety. To your horror, you find your lower half lifting into the air, swiftly followed by your torso and finally, your head, until you’re dangling upside down, dress and jacket falling and bunching up around your ears.   
In spite of the thick tights covering your legs, you still feel remarkably exposed.

Blood rushes to your cheeks and you give up the fight to escape in favour of lifting the dress back over your bare stomach. Out of sheer desperation, you take a deep breath and cry, “PUT ME DOWN!”

And incredibly, it  _does_.

The monster wheezes out a much more subdued sigh and slips its other hand around your waist, the cold touch bringing your skin out in goosebumps. If you weren’t so afraid for your life, you might have noticed the gentleness with which it flips you the right way up and places you on your feet. It doesn’t let you go completely, however. Instead, it holds you in a loose fist, leaving just enough room for you to pull your arms free, but not enough to escape.

The fact that you haven’t fainted yet is probably accredited to the stinging bite on your hand.

You’d almost rather you  _would_  faint, so you don’t have to stare your doom in the face.

The green lanterns clank and sway on their chains as the spectre moves. Even in the shifting light, you can glance down at your hand and see two droplets of blood oozing out of the little punctures in the skin. You swallow thickly.

_'If that’s an adder bite, I’m in trouble.’_

The monster holding you chuffs and you snap your head up, teeth chattering hard enough to make your jaw ache. You promptly recoil, coming face to face with that enormous, tattered hood. At this proximity, you can  _just_  make out the ghastly visage that hides within the layers of purple cloth.

You have to force yourself to blink several times to focus when your vision swims with tears, but squinting hard, you  _think_  the monster’s face resembles that of a giant skull. The white lights expand and glow brighter as it tilts its whole head to inspect you closely and you realise that you’re staring into its  _pupils_ , set deep within a pair of round, hollow eye sockets.

It appears to be interested in your makeup, smudged as it is from all the crying, for it rattles in its throat again and darts its attention all over your face, curious.

"I..I'm not really a skeleton!" you exclaim, immediately slapping a hand over your mouth. 

Apprehension curls in your stomach and presses uncomfortably on the walls, prompting you to try swallowing, but you find that your tongue is suddenly too dry.

Above you, the monster hisses, cocking its head to the other side before slowly reaching up to grasp its hood.

Breathing shallow and knees knocking together audibly, you watch, gradually pushing back against the caging fingers as it lifts the shroud from its head, exposing a countenance so ghastly, a whimper slides out from between your lips.

This thing…is more than just a shade or phantom. Its presence – especially uncovered – is  _indomitable_. In spite of the atrophied, skeletal body, there’s an underlying threat of omnipotence, of unassailable strength and power. Its head is quite simply a grim, enormous white skull with sharp teeth and a crooked nasal bone. When its lower jaw opens around an eerie murmur, you can make out a long, inky black tongue slipping over the inside of its mouth.

You’re suddenly, alarmingly aware that it could break you in half with as much effort as it takes  _you_  to blink.

So why hasn’t it hurt you yet?

As if on cue, the skull’s jaw drops and it lets out a warbled hum, turning to the side and – to your dismay – pressing its cheekbone to your chest.

Startled, you gasp and try to push its head away, a tricky task considering that the skull is almost as tall as your body is long. The spectral beast clacks its teeth together a few times, a soft, guttural growl rumbling up the exposed cartilage of a thyroid. Through your horror, it strikes you that such a sound shouldn’t be possible, given the lack of any visible muscle or larynx.

The monster’s – apparently malleable – eye sockets narrow in clear concentration, ignoring your feeble attempts to bat it away. All of a sudden, its eyes flash brilliantly and it trills, having located a fragile heart fluttering away under your skin. It draws away and looks down at you, keeping you transfixed in its icy stare. As it does, your body falls prey to a vicious shudder brought on by a combination of the cold and dread. Squeezing your eyes shut, overwhelmed, you let a few tears escape between your lashes and roll steadily down your face, following the lines their predecessors had made in your makeup.

A gentle croon from overhead causes you to jump and when something soft bumps into your hand, you cry out, eyes flying open to find the blue blanket being pushed under your nose. Cautiously, you look up and eye the monster. It remains perfectly still until you finally stretch out your fingertips and take hold of the proffered gift, snatching it out of the huge palm at the last second. Its jaw raises in a very un-monster-like grin when you do.

With the blanket clutched close to your heaving little chest, the spectre at last removes its hand, though without the added support, you fall gracelessly onto your rump.

Tittering, it snags your jacket’s collar up in its claws and hoists you to your feet again. Then, eyeing the hand you have clutched to your chest, it raises a slender, claw-tipped finger and brushes the tip so,  _so_  carefully over your knuckles.

If you weren’t so stunned, you’d have flinched away from the chilling touch.  “I…I - I don’t.. Who-…” 

The creature understandably utters a confused sound in response to your jumbled attempt at a sentence. 

Licking your lips, you steady your breathing and try again. “H… _hello_ …”

Your greeting seems to please the monster to no end, for it draws itself up and flexes its enormous wings, hissing back at you.

“Can…can you understand me?” you breathe.

At once, the skull bobs up and down, an unmistakable nod.

Kneading your hands into the blanket, you try to take control of your shivers by tugging it tighter around yourself again.

“And..you’re not…you’re not gonna hurt me, are you.” It’s more of a statement than a question. If this thing truly means you harm, it has a funny way of going about it.

The monster firmly shakes its head to the left, then to the right. ’ _No_.’

Abruptly, you release a breath you hadn’t even realised was stuck in your throat. “Then, can you help me?”

Again, an enthusiastic nod and it shifts closer, those pitch black sockets staring at you expectantly.

“Can you help me get out of here?”

In the blink of an eye, it’s jaw drops around an agitated moan and its face lifts away, eyebrow bones knitting together.

Your trembling worsens at its decidedly negative reaction. “Please?” you beg, backing up, “I-I have to go to a doctor!” Here, you gesture to the bitten hand. At this point, you’re certain that whatever snake had sunk its fangs into you, it was either a harmless grass snake, or it  _was_  an adder that had blessedly given you a dry bite. There’s no swelling, no redness or nausea. Not even any dizziness. You’re in no danger from the bite, but you can’t think of anything else to say to convey your urgency - your need to get out of this basement and its house.

“I’ve been bitten! By a venomous snake! See?”

At the mention of your injury, the monstrous form slumps heavily, hunching over itself and dropping it’s wings, the tips dragging through the dust. Its pupils shift over to peer at your hand and a low, sweeping sigh whistles out from its mouth.

Reluctant, the monster slides past you to the metal door and scrutinises it for a moment. Then, without warning, it places a palm on the surface and presses against it.

You yelp, covering your ears when the doors fly off their hinges, the now dented metal crashing to the ground with an almighty racket. Lowering your arms, you gape at the unblocked exit and blink rapidly. It had hardly touched the damn things.

“Woah,” you rasp, staggering over and glancing up the dark staircase. “You are….very strong!”

The spectre scratches at the back of its hand and avoids meeting your impressed stare. Suddenly, its head perks up as if it’s spotted something, and it flits away from your side for a moment towards the back of the basement.

You stare at the creature’s hunched shoulders and shabby robe, worrying at your bottom lip. You’re itching to just flee up the stairs and get out of there, but the only source of light is currently hanging off the belt of a supernatural being. Not to mention, you’d dropped your phone, although you’re fairly certain it’ll need repairs before it works again.

In the gloom, the monster emits a triumphant chitter before it sweeps back to the door, presenting you with a closed fist. Curious, but wary, you watch it unfurl its fingers and in the dim lantern light, you realise what it’s holding.

“My phone!” you softly exclaim, touched at the thoughtfulness of such a gesture. With trembling hands, you pick it up gingerly and murmur a quick, “Thanks!” to the monster, missing the surprised recoil of its head.

Trying the power button results in nothing but a blank screen, so you huff, though you aren’t entirely shocked. And really, a busted phone ought to be the least of your concerns.

The obstacle  _now_  is how you’re going to navigate your way back through the house without a light.

As if it read your mind, the monster slides its palm under your legs, wrapping a thumb around your stomach and scooping you off the ground, blanket and all.

Gasping with fright, you latch onto the hard knuckle of its forefinger whilst it stoops low and pulls itself through the basement doors.

The pair of lanterns illuminate the darkened stairwell ahead. Held in a monster’s gentle grip, you glide up the stairs in almost half the time it took you to come down them, eventually emerging out into the hallway with the paintings.

In the time you’d been trapped, it appears that the clouds have dispersed somewhat, revealing the pale moon, her light seeping in through cracks in the walls and providing a little extra visibility.

Glancing up at the underside of the monster’s jaw, your mind reels with a hundred-thousand questions, the most prominent of which being, ’ _What is this thing? A ghost? No. Ghosts are echoes, residue of the past and they can’t typically manipulate the world around them. A demon then_.’ Although if it is a demon, it isn’t behaving at all how you imaged they would. Not that you’ve met many, mind.

Does it have a name? Does it have a gender? How did it get here? Can it speak or does it just  _choose_  not to?

The spectre floats to a stop at the door leading into the entrance hall and passes you through, dropping you daintily to the floor on the other side before withdrawing its hand.

To begin with, you assume it hasn’t followed you because it can’t fit, and this is where you’ll have to part ways. But then, it ducks its skull and neck through the doorframe, twisting sideways to allow its shoulders in afterwards. Its robes – you come to find – are the bulkiest thing about the monster. They bunch and rumple as it slips under the entrance but it otherwise makes it through without much hinderance.

Once on your side, it raises back up to its full height and cracks its long neck, stretching both, vast wings up towards the ceiling with a contented hiss. After a moment of basking in the ample space, it bends to pick you up again, but you quickly stumble out of reach, stammering, “A-ah! That’s okay! I can walk now, thanks.” Offering the titanic spook a hesitant smile, you turn and begin to pick your way across to the front doors, thousands of shards of glass crunching underneath your heels.

Upon reaching the entrance to the manor, you pause to crack open the heavy doors and peer outside into the darkened courtyard.

Moonlight gleams off the cobblestone and sends shadows cast by trees twisting and creeping along the ground. In the distance, you catch sight of the faint, orange glow of a solitary streetlamp.

Blowing out a shaky exhale, you slump, relieved.

Something bumps hard into your back and you suddenly find yourself squashed up against the door. With a grunt, you crane your neck up to shoot an exasperated grimace at the monster, who’s poked it’s head and neck outside in much the same way you had, swivelling it left and right like a periscope and issuing a hushed rumble.

You shake your head with a tiny grin and shove the doors open proper, stepping outside and sucking down a deep lungful of fresh, October air.

“Well-” You turn around and look up at the monster where it lingers in the doorway, your arms swinging back and forth timidly. “Thank you for getting me out of there. I – I can make my own way from here…”

The beast hovers in place, skull quirked to regard you at an angle. It doesn’t make a sound though, so you cough into your fist, adding, “And I’m…I’m sorry about disturbing you? I really didn’t plan on getting locked in there…Oh!”

Its pupils flicker and shrink as you abruptly gasp, snapping your fingers when a thought hits you. “Charlie and Mia!”

At the mention of the other two humans, the monster’s hackles raise and it snaps its teeth. It must have gotten the gist that they weren’t your friends when it watched them lock you in the cold basement with it.

“They’re coming back in the morning,” you continue, nervously shuffling your feet and peeking up at the eye sockets through your lashes, “you’re not gonna…you know,  _hurt_  them, are you?”

It averts its gaze, huffing darkly through its nasal passage.

Frowning gently, you sigh and rub your sore hand. “I – I know what they did was wrong. Believe me – they definitely deserve to be punished. Just…If you hurt them, then you’ll be in trouble. Charlie’ll tell his dad about you and people will come to hunt you down. At the very least he’ll have ShadowBrook torn to the ground.”

It looks back down at you then, a question conveyed by the lilt in its hum.

“That would be  _bad_ ,” you reiterate, “…for  _ **you**_.”

The monster simply stares listlessly and you grumble, wondering if it doesn’t understand you, or if it just doesn’t care.

To be honest, you don’t know what the protocol should be in this situation. Here you’ve stumbled upon an otherworldly phenomenon, an impossible freak of nature that, by all accounts, should not exist!…..and you’re seriously considering keeping it to yourself?

This monster defies everything you’ve been taught about, and gazing up into those intelligent, curious eye sockets, you couldn’t imagine putting this creature in any danger.

It looks like something out of a nightmare. _Sounds_ like it too. And it’s obviously immensely powerful. But so far, it’s been nothing but inquisitive – _friendly_ , even. The malice that had lain heavily in the air over ShadowBrook is no longer there anymore.

Suddenly, a gentle croon snaps you out of your daze. “Sorry,” you mumble, biting your lip and jabbing a thumb over your shoulder. “Sorry, I’d better be going…Just, don’t do anything to Charlie and Mia, okay? Okay…Well, bye then.”

Spinning on your heel, you begin the steady march back down the drive towards town, keeping an eye on your footfalls and any wayward tree roots as you go.

The chill of a coming frost prickles your exposed face and neck, it’s only when you go to pull your jacket around you that you realise you’re still holding the blanket around your shoulders. So, you wrap yourself up in it more firmly, reminding yourself to stick it in the wash when you get back,

To your surprise, the familiar green glow your eyes had become accustomed to in the dark basement doesn’t gradually disappear the further you travel from the house. With each step, you remain bathed in the unearthly light. Upon glancing back, you let out a quiet moan.

The monster has managed to silently creep along after you, its robes billowing out behind it ethereally in the wind. Maybe it thinks you still need its light.

Gulping, you address it. “Oh. Uh, okay, I  _guess_  you can walk me to the gate?”

Through the woods you travel together in companionable silence, feeling infinitely safer going out than you had going in, until at last, you arrive at the wrought iron gates.

A feeling of elation washes over you as you wriggle through the gap and step out onto the familiar path. “Okay,” you call, turning to wave at the monster, who’s busy inspecting the gates, “Goodbye again!”

With that, you shake your head – still in a bewildered state of near-shock – and break into a swift walk, making for the other side of the road, eager to get some well earned sleep after your categorically arduous ordeal.

“Wish I could see their faces when they go back and find that door’s been busted in,” you snicker under your breath, “bet they’ll start thinking I’ve got super powers or something.”

A stiff gust of wind colder than ice, hits the back of your neck, followed by a series of guttural  _clicks_.

You whirl around with a shout, eyes on stalks. “What the-! No!” Hissing, you stretch up and place your hands underneath the monster’s nose bone, right over its front teeth, giving it’s skull a firm push backwards. “What are you doing!? You can’t be out here! Someone’ll see you!”

Evidently unfazed by the notion of being spotted, it chuffs, pupils glinting in their black sockets, doubtlessly amused by your meagre efforts to push it back towards the gates that now swing wide open. You grunt and strain, spinning about to thrust your back into it’s chin and push with your legs. A sound you’d swear was a chuckle rolls off it’s blackened tongue. 

Suddenly, it’s head snaps up into the air and sends you tumbling harmlessly to the ground with a yelp. A cat has leapt up on top of a green dustbin lid across the street. It observes the monster, who in turn, chitters at it, puzzled.

Then, the feline flattens its ears against its head and hisses.

Groaning, you raise your torso just in time to see the monster open its mouth and return the threat, only ten times louder and about a  _hundred_  times more terrifying.

In an instant, the car yowls and bounds off the bin, fleeing into the darkness of an alley with its tail puffed up like a feather duster.

Snorting, the monster returns its attention to where you’ve picked yourself off the ground and made your way around to its back, taking a handful of the tattered robes and giving them an almighty heave.

“Come.  _ON_! You can’t be out here! You have to go back to ShadowBrook!”

Clicking softly, it peers backwards under an arm at you and quirks its skull sideways, pupils blinking off and on. After a few moments of watching you struggle, it lifts its head and looks to the  black gates, brow bones merging together. Beyond them, the derelict manor house waits patiently for it’s lonely resident to return to those deserted hallways and empty rooms. To the deafening, impermeable silence that it’s come to loathe.

Then, it roves its icy gaze down to you; at all of your life and colour and  _sound_ that shone like a halo, illuminating the darkest corners of its basement and chasing the shadows away.

The monster’s troubled frown softens as it twists about to face you, causing you to release its robes when it snakes its head down and you barely catch your breath before its promptly knocked out of you again by the huge skull that bumps gently into your stomach, chasing your body heat when you stumble backwards with an 'oof!’

Your hands shoot up and you brace yourself, nose scrunched up apprehensively, misreading the affection gesture as something more sinister.

But a soft warble rattles its way up the monster’s throat and sends ticklish tremors through your belly. You can’t hold back a surprised laugh, squirming away from it and crossing your arms, shooting it as stern a glare as you can over the smile that’s pulling your lips apart.

“Yeah, yeah. We’re friends now,” you roll your eyes. Its skeletal wings beat at that, jaw lifting its cheekbones. “But-” you say, holding up a finger to quiet it. “-that doesn’t mean you can come home with me.”

Instantly, the mighty spectre deflates. Even its robes seem to fall flat.

Meanwhile, you hum, tapping your chin thoughtfully.

It’s clear that if this thing wants to follow you, you’re powerless to stop it. But you can’t spend the night at ShadowBrook. You aren’t quite up there on the bravery scale just yet.

So, perhaps a compromise – to satiate the giant, flying skeleton with apparent abandonment issues.

“What if…” You trail off to chew on your lip. Are you really about to make this promise? Could you trust that this thing isn’t dangerous? Taking a deep breath, you finish, “what if, I come back tomorrow?”

The creature stops making that odd gurgle in the back of it’s throat and squints at you, appearing pensive as it mulls over your words. Sparing the woods a glance, it murmurs uncertainly.

You cut its worrying off by adding, “I promise, I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon. I…I have to admit, I’ve got a lot of things I want to ask you. Just…not tonight. I don’t think I could get my head around any more weirdness.”

Jaw dropping open and then snapping shut again, it shifts its gaze between you and the gates, jumping when your small hand wraps around one of it’s long fingers and you begin to lead it back to the entrance of ShadowBrook, glancing up and down the street for any sign of passersby. Once you reach the gates, you wait until the monster has drifted all the way through before letting go of its finger and backing away from it, keeping a finger raised and pointed at it’s face. 

“Stay,” you command. 

Its pupils dim in their sockets and it breezes a few steps closer, only stopping at the angry scowl that creases your forehead. “I mean it. You have to stay here tonight, but I  _swear_  I’ll be back tomorrow.” Shaping your face into a tired smile, you touch the blue blanket around your neck. “I have to return  _this_  after all.” 

It’s slow and hesitant, but after a long moment of silence, the monster’s chest expands around a heavy sigh. The algid breath it releases is powerful enough to reach you even behind the gate, buffeting against you and raising goosebumps on your skin again. One, bony hand reaches up to grasp its indigo shroud and it sends you a trusting nod before tugging the hood back into place, covering its white skull once more. 

Satisfied and a little giddy, you beam up at the hooded figure and call in a hushed whisper, “Goodnight!” and turn around once more, trailing out through the gates and trotting eagerly off into the night. You feel the ShadowBrook monster’s eyes on your neck all the way back to your halls.


	2. Doubts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You wake up in your dorm room and begin to question everything you saw last night....

The blaring, monotonous trill of an alarm tugs you from a much needed slumber. Grumbling resentfully at the injustice that often comes with being woken up so unceremoniously, you turn over and huff loudly into your soft pillow, where you proceed to squeeze your eyes shut even more firmly, clinging to the vestiges of sleep with the very tips of your consciousness in an attempt to block out the paltry slats of grey sunlight that fight their way through the gap in your curtains.

A click from the old radio clock on your bedside table is swiftly followed by a few, blessed seconds of peace. At least until the familiar drone of Sculborough’s local weatherman - Terry Lester - begins to announce the morning weather.

Grudgingly peeling your eyelids apart and releasing a hot, raspy breath into the pillowcase, you turn a wicked eye onto the blue, LED lights that blink at you steadily, indicating the ungodly hour.

‘7:00am,’ on the dot. The fog lingering at the forefront of your sleep-addled brain finally starts to dissipate as a bright, cheery voice cuts through to it, sharp as a butcher’s knife.

“….-  _morning Scullborough! It’s seven am and if you’ve just joined us, I’m Terry Lester with the weather. It’s gonna be a cold one today folks, we’ve got a weather front sweeping in from the east that’ll be bringing strong winds and heavy cloud, and with temperatures hanging around zero degrees, we can definitely be expecting some snow on the way. Good news for the kids, eh_?”

“Sure Terry,” you mumble, dragging yourself onto your side and reaching out to slam a hand down heavily on the snooze button. 

Anybody who’s  _that_  chipper so early in the morning is definitely up to something shady. As soon as your bedroom plunges back into silence, you sigh and raising a few fingers to wipe the sleep from your eyes. Pulling away a few moments later, you pause, your attention promptly caught by a small patch of skin between your thumb and forefinger. “What the…?”

Bringing the hand closer, you squint at it until you can clearly make out a pair of raised red lumps that stand side by side, marring the otherwise  _un_ blemished stretch of flesh.

Drawing a momentary blank, you simply cock your head to one side and blink.

Then, all of a sudden, you’re shooting upright in bed with a strangled gasp and staring down at your hand as if it had abruptly sprouted wings.

A flood of images from last night bombard your mind’s eye. Flashes of heavy steel doors, dark crawlspaces and coiled snakes, of giant hooded figures and piercing white pupils that burn hotly in the eye-sockets of an enormous, grinning skull.

By the time the images stop coming, you’ve staggered to your feet and half-collapsed over the sink at the foot of your small, cramped dorm room, staring into the mirror at your dishevelled hair and wide eyes.

“No…No way…” you mutter, watching your lips move in time with the words, “That didn’t happen. It was just a dream…”

Just a very vivid, very  _real_  dream….

Or perhaps  _nightmare_  would be more apt. Some kind of sleep paralysis, maybe? That wouldn’t explain the snake bite though…. It was such a vivid moment - The spike of pain lancing up your arm. The overwhelming surge of adrenaline that kicked your heart into a near panic. The feeling of cold, slender fingers wrapping securely around your thighs….

You shudder, furiously rubbing at your arms to distract yourself from the eerie recollection.

After scrutinising your face in the mirror for a few more moments, you promptly turn the cold tap on and splash two handfuls of icy water over your face, washing away tiny specks of makeup you’d missed during a routine cleanse the night before.

The cold is somewhat unpleasant, only enhancing the chill that already lingers in the early morning air, but it  _is_  refreshing and proceeds to wake you up a little more, giving your mind a much needed boost. Dragging several, trembling fingers down your cheeks, you sigh at the dripping reflection and attempt to rationalise things or at the very least, gather your thoughts into some semblance of order.

You went to a halloween party last night. Fact.  
The party was dull.  _Also_  a fact.  
You’d had a lemonade to keep your energy up, unwilling to get drunk that particular night and then, you left and headed back to your dorm,  _but_  you’d been waylaid by Mia and Charlie, who locked you in the basement of ShadowBrook house where you proceeded to have one of the worst nights of your life, not to mention the most bizarre.

The latter detail is….not such a solid fact as you’d like it to be, given that the events that unfurled were simply too strange  _and_  unbelievable to be marked as true, not without some proof.

It  _is_  possible that someone had slipped something into your drink at the party; a psychedelic drug perhaps?

Although you know for a  _fact_  that you hadn’t put the glass down anywhere, or even taken your eyes off it for more than a few seconds at a time. The club you were in had a reputation for being safe and well-monitored. If someone  _had_  tried to drug you, they would need to have been exceedingly crafty.

Whilst certainly not watertight, your theory of having your drink spiked is miles more authentic than ’ _turns out monsters and ghosts are real. Who knew?_ ’

The only problem with this hypothesis…is that you feel perfectly  _fine -_ exhaustion and the apparent snake bite on your hand notwithstanding.

Every little detail about the night previous isas clear as day. You don’t have a headache, nor do you feel even remotely hungover. There isn’t any pain stiffening the joints of your body, your clothes are all intact and you can remember each moment from leaving your dorm room to returning several hours later. Everything that happened is too

“Okay,” you state in a voice that’s sturdier than your nerves, “Okay. I guess drugs is out then…”

So, what in the living hell could that  _thing_  have been?

Just like the snake bite, you can recall so many, fiddly details about the monster lurking in ShadowBrook’s basement, so many that it becomes difficult to discredit what you saw. A particularly clear memory conjures up the lingering scents of old fabric, of dust blown from the cover of a leather bound book and following that, an ice-cold breath ghosting over the back of your neck.

The recollection causes you to blanch, so you quickly put it from your mind, deciding that it would be much better to instead busy yourself with getting ready for the day ahead. While you do, you fashion yourself a little explanation for what might have happened. It’s funny how daylight can fuel a logical mind. The darkness breeds an active imagination and can even turn a skeptic into a believer if they’re scared enough. And you had been absolutely terrified.

Charlie and Mia locked you in the basement of a supposedly haunted house and left you there, alone in the dark. And with predisposed claustrophobia already clouding your judgement, you’d simply allowed your brain to fill in blanks, conjuring a horrifying monster that was just a manifestation of your fears. It so  _closely_  resembled the grim reaper, complete with a haunting moan and frigid breath, simply because you were afraid of dying alone and trapped in a cold, dark basement.

“There’s an explanation for everything,” you convince yourself, inspecting your reflection one last time and dotting some vaseline on your lips, “Could’ve  _easily_  been a hallucination…”

…Could it though? Such a theory isn’t  **out**  of the question, yet neither is it the most plausible one you’ve come up with so far.

Satisfied that you’ve gathered everything you’ll need for the nine o’ clock lecture, you make your way to the foot of the bed and bend down to retrieve your book-bag but as you do, you register something from the corner of your eye, a flash of blue sitting against the black and grey of your duvet cover.

Trepidation creeps into your gut as you slowly turn and catch sight of a familiar, argyle-blue scrap of cloth. “The blanket,” you numbly whisper. The very blanket you’d promised to return to the entity that doesn’t exist….It sits there innocently enough, unassuming on top of the bed. But its being here just feels…  _wrong_.   
Your brow draws together and you chew pensively on a lip. It doesn’t belong in your dorm, it belongs in ShadowBrook. That monster had given it - “No.” You sternly cut yourself off aloud. “I  _took_  it.” Perhaps if you reinforce to yourself that there isn’t really a monster skulking about the old house in the woods, you’ll start to believe it..

Although there wasn’t anyone living in the house to miss the blanket, it just didn’t feel right keeping it.

That’s what you tell yourself, anyway.

In truth, you’d be lying if you said there wasn’t a shred of curiosity – of anticipation - lurking in the pit of your stomach. A desire to pursue a mystery, to know for sure that the monster had been in your mind.   
Closure.

 _That’s_  what you’d like.

But first…

Throwing the book bag over your shoulder, you dig around in the pocket of your jacket and fish out your phone to check the time. At the sight of it though, you freeze, one foot out the door. The screen has shattered, hairline cracks zigzag up and down it like little rivulets and when you try the power, it remains stubbornly unresponsive. ’ _That’s right_ ,’ you think, eyes narrowing, ’ _I dropped it in the basement and the…the light went out._ ’

So how had you managed to find it again in that pitch black room?

With a cursory glance back at the blanket, you make a mental note to retrieve it after the morning lecture.   
After that….

After that, you don’t know  _what_  you’ll do.

Probably something stupid.

Setting your mouth into a hard line, you step fully from the door and let it shut behind you, turning the key in its lock. With your mind whirling at a thousand miles per hour, you pull the jacket collar up higher against the cold, toss a wary grimace to the dark grey clouds overhead and trudge across campus towards the art department.

—

The lecture hall is….unfortunately  _lacking_  in students this morning.

Apparently, Halloween is a popular night for people to go out and get completely paralytic, then spend the next day avoiding daylight, people and learning. Even your lecturer, Marion looks as though she’ll snap the heads off anyone who so much looks at her strangely, and the two water bottles on her desk were a pretty strong clue as to her activities the previous night. Though where professors go to party, you’ve yet to find out..

For the first half an hour, you slouched in one of the rigid, purple chairs near the back next to a few other students who deigned to show up, doodling skulls in your note book and half-listening to a powerpoint presentation. Truthfully, your mind is still in that house in the woods, deliberating on the monster. If it  _was_  just a fear-induced fantasy, you need to start commending your brain.

“Hey, nice skulls.”

You give a start when someone behind you leans forwards and whispers in your ear. “Huh?”   
Heart racing, your eyes dart down to the page of your notebook, only to realise that you had indeed spaced out and you’ve been doodling nothing but chilling, black-socketed skulls for who  _knows_  how long. That’s when the voice speaks again, dragging you back to the lecture hall. “Fitting. Cos I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

Fast enough to nearly crick your neck, you whip around to find that, sitting right behind you and invading your personal space, is the very  _last_  boy you wanted to see today.

Charlie Squall’s face evokes a palpable rage, his teeth bared into a dangerous grin.

Where the Hell had  _he_  come from!? He definitely hadn’t been there when you sat down.

You jump when, without warning, his hand claps down on your shoulder and gives it a tight squeeze, yet his vice-like grip unnerves you  _less_  than the total detestation on his face. Pulse racing, you will yourself not to shrink under his glare and try to remember that  _this_  is the guy whose eyes you sort of maybe want to poke out just a little bit.

“So, Mia and I paid a little a visit to ShadowBrook,” he hisses through clenched teeth, the grip never leaving your shoulder, “Thought we’d let you go in time for today’s lecture. Even got up nice and early for you, you know?”

Swallowing thickly, you eyes flick to the students on your left, past Charlie’s head. To your relief, they’re beginning to take notice, frowning darkly at him, ready to step in.

Taking note of his surroundings, he at least has the sense to release your shoulder, but not before giving it a bruising clasp, hard enough to make you wince.

Despite no longer subjected you to his nasty grip, Charlie remains leant over the back of your chair, breathing hotly down your neck. “Imagine our surprise when we go and find those  _steel_  doors bashed in and  _you_  ’re nowhere to be found?”

“ _AHEM_!”

Both of your heads snap to the front when Marion clears her throat loudly and sends a heated glare your way.

Sneering coldly, Squall retreats, giving you a little more breathing room and allowing you to duck your head to avoid the wrath of the professor. But no sooner has she returned her attention to the presentation, Charlie all but dives forwards again, pulling an exasperated groan from your lips as he heaves an exaggerated sigh, the stench of egg and toast rolling over his tongue and crawling up your nostrils. “Who helped you? How the hell did you get out of there?” The temptation to gloat, to spin and clock him square in the jaw and laugh as he squirms is almost impossible to swallow. You manage it, of course, because if there’s one thing you know about Squall it’s that he’s a baiter. He craves the attention of a retaliation, so, for this reason, you elect to simply ignore him.

Ignoring Charlie Squall would get under his skin like a tick and denying him the answers he so desperately covets won’t get  _you_  in trouble with the lecturer. A win-win, by your standards.

“Those doors were  _solid._   _Steel_..I slid that bar across them myself! No way  _you_  did that. Did you tell anyone!? I know you told  _someone_.”

His voice is livid, strained, though you couldn’t be paying it less mind, too focused on what he said prior. He’s right, much as it pains you to admit. The doors…..He said they’d been bashed in. You know for a fact you aren’t capable of doing something like that.

Suddenly, the 'fear-induced hallucination theory’ doesn’t sound  _nearly_  as plausible.

“MISTER SQUALL!”

Charlie nearly bucks out of his seat as Marion barks fiercely from her desk at the front, nostrils flaring wildly. “If you’re going to keep disturbing my other students, you can come down here and sit at the front!”

Admonished, he scratches at the back of his head, cowing under the judgmental stares of his peers. “Sorry miss, I was just asking Y/n for a pen-”

“I don’t care if you were asking her how to tie your shoelaces. Get down here.” She thrusts her long nail at a seat almost directly in front of her desk but he doesn’t move for a few seconds, staring at the back of your head, so Marion’s voice turns low and eerily calm. “ _Now_ , Mister Squall.”

It’s very difficult to suppress a self-satisfied smirk as Charlie huffs, gets his feet, snatches his bag up and proceeds to do a very literal walk of shame down to the front row of seats, throwing himself in the chair Marion indicates.

Grateful for her intervention, you shoot her a brief smile, a gesture she returns with a nod before continuing the lecture. Releasing the baited breath you’d been holding, you slump back into your own seat and tap your pencil on the notebook. So…He did go back to ShadowBrook, and he didn’t make any mention of a monster. If he had seen something, you doubt he’d be able to keep it to himself for long. Either the monster really doesn’t exist and you possess the strength of ten, grown men, or….

Dozens of tiny skulls stare up at you from the cartridge paper. You trace a finger carefully over the jawline of one, frowning softly. Is it so ridiculous to believe that there could be something so mysterious happening right on the outskirts of town?

A flash of anticipation raises your heart rate a little and you tooth pensively at a loose bit of dry skin hanging from your lower lip.

Not a moment later, a piece of paper is suddenly slid into view and snatches you back to the lecture.  
You blink down at it, then dart your gaze to the student three seats to your left.

It’s Luke - a kind, fair-faced boy with an abundance of golden freckles that match his messy pony tail, a few baby curls sticking out from behind his ears. His brow furrows over a pair of warm, honey-brown eyes and nods down to the note.

’ _You okay_?’ it reads, simply. It’s a thoughtful gesture, considering you’ve barely said a word to each other all year.

Giving the sloppy biro a quick once over, you send him a sheepish grin and nod, quickly scribbling down, ’ _Yeah, all good_ ,’ underneath his message and sliding the paper back. He reads it, mouth tugging down at the corners in a way you’d swear looks a little put out, perhaps because you hadn’t divulged the details with him. If nothing else, the students on your course positively  _adore_  a bit of juicy gossip. For a moment, you half expect him to try again with another note, but to his credit, he just flashes you a thumbs up and leans back into his seat, facing forwards once more.

The rest of the hour passes without further incident and by the time the bell rings to signal the end of Marion’s lecture, you’ve flown out through the doors at the back before Charlie has even put his jacket on. Unbeknownst to you though, your movements are followed by a pair of curious, brown eyes…

—–

Deep in the heart of Sculborough woods, inside ShadowBrook house’s deteriorated entrance hall, lurks a monster. A very  _real_ , very corporeal monster.   
Since the crack of dawn, after it had dragged itself from a dreamless, meditative state, it’s been pacing – or gliding - back and forth from one end of the hall to another, its long, shabby purple cloak sweeping along the floor and disturbing a thick layer of dust and crystalline glass shards; remnants of the fallen chandelier that rests in the centre of a grand staircase.

Every now and then, its hood snaps in the direction of the oaken front doors and two, skeletal wings that extend from its back tense, quivering in anticipation, as if it had heard something. But, when nobody comes through the entrance, its shoulders slump, lanterns clanking noisily, and it goes right back to pacing, waiting for it’s new friend to return.

At the thought of the human woman, its bony jaw raises, brow-bone drooping to half obscure its glinting, white pupils. Had it been a human itself, that expression would most closely resemble a dopey grin.

She had spoken to it.  _To_  it! She’d been scared at first, of  _course_  she was. Who  _wouldn’t_ be afraid of getting locked in a dark basement in the woods with a giant, emaciated skeleton?

For the first time in centuries, it finds itself regretting this form’s ineptitude for articulate speech.

Her strange little voice was the first it had heard of another, living creature since its imprisonment on Earth, the light she brought with her in that tiny black box shone purer and brighter that its own lanterns ever did.

For so long, the beast had only known the scent of old books, dust and tree bark. The moment  _she_  rushed into the basement, its nasal passages were filled so abruptly with the overwhelming fragrance of her perfume, it left the monster’s mind reeling, dazzled and momentarily disoriented. But then, breaking through the mesmerising smell came another, far less pleasant.  
Fear.   
She reeked of it. She  _still_  reeked of it - although to a lesser degree - even after she’d learnt that it meant her no harm, that it only had an interest in discovering her, in warming her so she didn’t freeze to death. It may have been cursed to remain in this body, and there are those who would argue, itself included, that it had been a monster long before it was turned into one. But it had always kept a secret place in its heart for mankind. And she was the first human it had interacted with in….Well, it’s been a while.

Then….the impossible. She called it her friend and it was  _then_  that the monster realised just how soul achingly lonely it had been these last few centuries.

So, like a good friend, it stayed behind, trusting her when she promised to return. It didn’t even try to attack the other two – the far crueller ones – because she’d asked it not to. Not for fear of  _their_  safety, but for its own! She fretted about  _it_.

It had relished in the shock and abject horror on their faces when they came by not long after the sky had begun brighten, only to discover that their makeshift prison cell had been broken out of. Pride swelled in its chest at the knowledge that it had put that fear in their wicked little hearts. They hurried out of there like bats out of Hell, and it resumed its vigilant watch of the front door.   
Friends are a rare commodity, especially for the spectre of ShadowBrook, and it is adamant that it will not lose the only one it has by hurting the other humans, regardless of whether they deserved it or not.

But as the day wore on and she still hadn’t returned, even when the winter sun reached its peak and then began to sink behind the heavy, snow-choked clouds, the monster’s hope started to dwindle. ’ _Where is she? Is she hurt?_ ’ it wonders, a distressed croon rumbling up its throat, ’ _Did those other humans trap her somewhere else?_ ’ At that thought, the beast’s hackles raise, only falling under the weight of another, far more likely concept. ’ _What if she’s too afraid to return?_ ’

The empty cavity in its chest where a heart never beats gives a painful throb and it raises a slender hand, pressing against its clavicle.  

The latter explanation, though sad, is likely the most obvious reason she hasn’t returned to the house….

Alone with only its thoughts for company in the empty dark, the ShadowBrook monster raises its skull to the weather-worn ceiling and lets out a melancholy howl, so high and keening, if any passing human had heard it, they might easily mistake it for the cry of an elk and then pause to wonder  _why_  on earth an elk would be strolling around the woods in  _this_  part of the world.

Thoroughly heartsick, the monster drifts aimlessly from room to room, radiating a dark, heavy energy that seeps into the house’s woodwork and slithers outside, choking the very air itself until an invisible, cumbersome gloom settles over the entire area from the house to the wrought iron gates at the end of its driveway.

With the atmosphere dragged down to match the monster’s mood, it ruminates on the Creator’s barbarism, to give a lonely wretch the briefest moments of companionship, only to snatch the feeling away so unceremoniously.

One selfish thought, above all others, pushes to the forefront of its mind.

It should not have let you go…

—-

The campus clock tower chimes two o’ clock, the rings muffled some by the falling snow that’s already begun to settle on the dry ground and send the rest of Sculborough into an excited tizzy. Students dart about outside, hiding behind buildings and bushes and grabbing handfuls of the powdery substance to pitch at windows, cars, their friends, anything within lobbing distance. A wet thunk hits the glass of your bedroom window but you barely even blink.   
You’ve been sitting on your duvet for the last half an hour with the blue blanket over your knees, leg bouncing rapidly and teeth stuffed into your lower lip.

All day you’ve been wrestling with the notion of returning to ShadowBrook and proving to yourself once and for all that there  _is_  no monster, so you can focus on trying to press charges against Squall and Mia for endangerment, kidnapping under false-pretence, being dicks in general - whatever you can get them for.

It won’t be easy, what with Charlie’s father being the Head of Department at the university..

With a heavy groan, you pull the second, hunter-green wellington boot on over your thick tights. “This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

In the end, the thing that swayed you, that convinced you you should return to ShadowBrook isn’t just the burning desire for answers, although that’s certainly a factor. No, it’s the blue, tatty scrap of wool currently sitting in your lap.

You scowl down at it in silence, cursing the poor blanket for even existing.

Problem is, you made a promise – real or not – to return the blasted thing to the house in the woods.  _That_  much at least, you can recall. And a promise left unkept, even one as silly as this, niggles at the back of your mind, always there, waiting until you fulfil it.

Glancing out the window as you stand up, you grimace at the delicate snowflakes swirling down from a quickly darkening sky.

Rummaging around at the bottom of the wardrobe for a while, you eventually manage to find your grey knitted hat, scarf and matching gloves. “There,” you declare to the empty room, inspecting your reflection with a rucksack hanging from your shoulders over your navy, waterproof jacket. “At least this time, I won’t freeze to death.”

No.  _This_  time, you’re going prepared.

You’ve packed a heavy-duty torch with extra batteries, the backup flip-phone you keep in a drawer for emergencies, a few energy bars and a bottle of water.

As satisfied as you’ll ever be, you breathe in a lungful of air, hold it, then blow it out roughly through pursed lips.

With the blanket rolled up and strapped securely to your rucksack, you grab the keys off your bed and head out the door, locking it behind you for a second time that day and trying to ignore the slight tremble in your fingers that has nothing to do with the cold.

—–

Blustering wind threatens to snatch the hat from your head as you stand at the threshold of ShadowBrook house and stare timidly up at the wrought iron gates. Like a pair of vast, black guardians, they moan and sway on their hinges back and forth in gentle motions. Beyond them, the tree branches creak with each cold gust of autumn wind.

Gulping down past an enormous lump, you hesitantly stretch out a hand, pause, then finally wrap your gloved fingers around the nearest bar.

And just like that, the wind drops and an unexpected shiver ripples up your arm from the point of contact.

Suddenly, the empty street behind you starts to feel a lot safer than the snowy woods beyond the low, brick wall.

The very air around you feels….melancholy, thick and as dark as the clouds choking the sky. There’s a despondency emanating from those ground that you’re sure wasn’t there yesterday.

An urge to just throw the blanket through the gates and book it out of there threatens to overwhelm you, though something a little stronger shoves the impulse down.

You often find yourself cursing the strength of your curiosity.

So, despite the oppressive aura lurking about, you force your lungs to take in a steadying breath, brace yourself, and tug the gates open, ducking through to the other side.

Although there isn’t any trace of a sun behind so many snow clouds, you’re acutely aware that the sky is rapidly darkening with every second that ticks by. It’s as though you’ve walked into the eye of a storm. No twigs snaps under the foot of some, woodland critter scurrying along the frosty ground. There isn’t any wind to disturb the twisting branches that claw their way skyward, not a single leaf flutters, and all too soon, the silence becomes deafening and you find yourself taking heavier steps on the gravel, if only to break up the eerie monotony of soundlessness.

By the time you’ve reached the cobblestone courtyard, you’re fairly certain the air has grown even denser and noticeably colder. Two columns of white air billow out of your nostrils, giving you the distinct appearance of a snorting bull, bundled up from head to toe in warm clothes.   
Subconsciously tugging your rucksack higher, you creep slowly around the central, frozen fountain,  eyes wide and alert as you scan your surroundings.

Daylight reveals far more of the old manor house than you’d been exposed to last night.  

Creeping ivy covers almost the entire front of Shadowbrook, spreading like a thick, green blanket from ground to shingled roof. One of the unnecessarily numerous chimneys on the east wing has collapsed in on itself and if you squint, you can make out the blackened beams and burnt bricks poking out from the top of the hole, tragic remnants of a fire long since past.

From the corner of your eye, you could swear a shadow passes across one of the broken old windows on the third storey, but when you turn to look – predictably – there’s nothing there.

“Ooookay,” you swallow, tiptoeing up to the front doors and unclipping your heavy-duty torch from the side of the rucksack.

Memories of last night rise to the surface as soon as you step over the threshold and into the spacious entrance hall. Fragments of chandelier lay scattered like a thousand diamonds, glittering under the beam of your torch as you sweep it over the room, chasing shadows out of the dark corners and revealing a terribly dusty, polished greek marble. At one point in time, it would have shone pristinely white and sparkled under the chandelier.

Emboldened by the presence of daylight drifting in through the impressively wide, stained glass window set right at the top of the staircase, you venture a little further into the room, pulling off your rucksack as you go and setting it down beside an over-turned chaise lounge. Whilst spinning in a slow circle and marvelling at the wooden, coffered ceiling, you absentmindedly pass the torch between your hands, removing your gloves and hat and tossing them haphazardly onto the discarded rucksack.

On an impulse, teeth chattering violently, you suck in a deep breath and call out, “Hello!?”

The volume of your own, wobbling voice makes you jump and slap a hand over your mouth just a second after you opened it, horrified. You hadn’t meant for that to be so loud.

The throng of your shout echoes through the house, filling every cobwebbed corner and hidden cranny, disturbing the perfect silence that had lorded over the ruins for centuries.

Shouting in here feels a lot like shouting in a church. Rude and disrespectful.

For some time after the last echo stops feeding back into your sensitive ears, you remain utterly still, puffs of white cloud escaping from the gaps between your fingers with every apprehensive exhale.

And then, like some, mighty giant letting out a thousand year-old breath, the house  _sighs_.

An invisible weight lifts from your shoulders as the heaviness in the air dissipates, leaving the atmosphere inexplicably lighter and far less oppressive than it had been just seconds earlier. Unfortunately, such a disturbingly abrupt change doesn’t necessarily comfort you.

Predominantly because of the sudden swoosh and rattle of something  _moving_  onto the landing above the grand staircase.

You whip the torch around, illuminating every shadow you can, feeling very much like a mouse in the midst of a lion’s den.

All of a sudden, you freeze, eyes bulging and the torchlight quivering wildly in your hands. There’s a soft clicking sound coming from directly above and behind your head that sets your pulse racing. The familiar, stomach-churning sound of bone hitting bone.

For the second time in as many days, a sheen of sweat breaks out across your forehead and your breaths start coming louder and faster until you’re almost gasping.

Keeping your shaky legs rooted firmly to the spot, you stiffly twist your head around to peer back over your left shoulder.

Only the dark, brown-carpeted staircase greets your wide eyes, the fallen chandelier in the exact same place as it had been the night before.

After a few seconds pass without incident, you release a wheezing, breathless laugh.

You’d been half convinced that the ShadowBrook apparition would be looming right behind you. However, there isn’t a spectre in sight. Just a spooky grand staircase in an even spookier entrance hall. ’ _Maybe I’m just going nuts_ ,’ you entertain the thought, chuckling a little before swivelling your head forwards again-

-and let out a scream so piercing, it sets your teeth on edge. The torch slips from your grasp, clattering onto the floor and lighting the tattered ends of a fathomless, billowing, indigo cloak.

The giant, grinning skull of ShadowBrook’s resident monster hovers mere inches from your face, the skeletal hand that had been reaching out for you recoiling slightly when the scream rips unexpectedly out of your throat.

Frantic, you try to scurry backwards but your boots slip on some loose glass shards and you tumble over, landing heavily on your rump, the jolt pushing a pained ’ _Gah_!’ from your lungs. Feeling your heart hammer a mile a minute, you kick out with your legs, knocking the torch off into a corner, and scuffle away from the hooded creature until your back hits the front doors, paying no mind to the broken shards of chandelier glass that cut and dig into the palms of your hands.

That creature…the one from last night….  
You hadn’t dreamt it up! Nor had you hallucinated it!   
The whole damn night had gone just as you remembered.

“Y-You were  _real_!?” you squeak, gaping up under the indigo hood at it.

Unsurprisingly, the phantom doesn’t reply with words. Instead, it’s brow bones tilt up in the middle and it snaps its teeth together a few times and one of those long, spindly arms emerges from beneath its cloak and moves towards you, fingers outstretched and poised to grab.

Staring up at the monster’s bandaged-wrapped palm as it rapidly closes in on you, it isn’t long before your 'fight or flight’ instincts kick in. Once again, they settle relatively easily on 'flight.’

Quick as a flash, you whirl around to face the door, gripping the handle and nearly wrenching the whole thing off its hinges upon flinging it open, your rucksack and gloves completely forgotten. Outside, the snow has begun to fall even harder, coating the ground with a thin layer of crisp frost, turning everything into a sweeping landscape of silvery grey. This does not deter you however. Crawling through the entrance, you try to slip and slide onto your feet, hands scrabbling over the cold stone that numbs the cuts on your palms.

Unbeknownst to you, the second those doors opened, the creature’s pupils shrink nearly into nonexistence and an urgent croak bursts off the end of its tongue. Panic-stricken, it surges forwards after you so fast, the wind that had picked up outside dislodges its indigo hood and fully reveals the giant skull and long, bumpy vertebrae of its neck.

You only make it about three feet from the door when fingers – cold and rigid as a corpse’s – hurriedly snake around your waist and jerk you to a slippery halt. Any hope of escape is dashed against the proverbial rocks when your feet suddenly leave the ground and you find yourself being lifted  _back_  through the entrance once again. “No, no! Wait!” you plead, reaching out with both hands as the daylight is abruptly blocked out when the doors slam shut, held firmly closed by a huge, skeletal palm.

The monster’s shoulders heave, it’s eye sockets round and wide. For some time, you stare at each other in shocked silence, save for your frightened pants and struggles to free yourself, all the while never taking your eyes off those empty, black eyes.

'She came back.’

Over and over again, like a broken record, the simple mantra plays on a loop in the monster’s mind. The little human’s warmth seeps through to its chilly palm and it has to stop itself from sagging down onto the ground with sheer relief. When it heard her voice, the same voice that had pulled it back into the waking world last night, the monster had nearly cracked its skull open in a rush to zoom through a low passage way on the third floor. It hadn’t meant to scare her..

No, no. Never scare. Not  _her_.

But when it emerged behind her, moulding from the shadows with the stealth of a phantom, it found itself unable to do much else aside from stare down at the top of her head. It had meant to let out a hiss to alert her of its presence, so it can’t really blame her for being startled. The moment she ran, a surge of uncontrollable protectiveness shot through its chest and prompted it to snatch her back into safety. It told itself it was merely worried that being exposed to the cold, harsh elements outside would damage her, if only to distract itself from the truth of its motivations. Simply put, the monster’s loneliness had lain itself bare in the few seconds she’d taken to escape. Plagued by the possibility of being abandoned to the solitude of ShadowBrook once more, it panicked, selfishness reared its ugly head and it realised - quite suddenly – that she had to stay, if only for a little while. Just long enough to satiate its hunger for company.

Now, clasping the human in its sturdy hand, the monster wills itself to calm down.

It has her.

She’s not going anywhere yet.

Calm down…

—

As you watch the monster’s sternum expand and contract alongside redundant intakes of air, a pair of tiny, white lights slowly bloom into existence from the darkness of its sockets, growing steadily brighter the longer it gazes down at you, soft hisses escaping in intervals from between it’s ivory teeth, all the while, your pulse sledgehammers against the skin of your wrists.

At that moment, letting out a throaty hum, the monstrosity bends its head down, causing you to recoil instinctively.

You can’t believe it’s real!

Its jawbone works open just a hair’s breadth away from your nervous face and you whimper, eyes clenching shut and pushing out a tear that winds its way down to your chin. As far as you can remember, this thing hadn’t hurt you last night, but in reality, you still have no idea what it is, nor its true agenda. Worse still, the hand holding you only tightens in response to each of your feeble kicks, reasserting the notion that you’ll never escape and you abruptly recall how easily it had thrown the basement doors from their hinges. Even if it didn’t mean to, this thing is beyond dangerous and could very easily do some damage.

“Ple-please!” you manage to choke, earning yourself an attentive coo. “Just – just don’t hurt me!”

The beast’s head pulls away to study you, the downward curve of its brow bone indicating displeasure before suddenly, it drifts near again to hover just in front of your face and a slimy, ink-black tongue slides out from between the skull’s fangs, tentatively extending towards you.   
Clamping your mouth shut, you choke down on a sob when the soft, pointed tip prods against your chin and drags delicately over the rest of your jaw line to swipe up a few, salty tears before slithering right back into its mouth.

Your eyes snap open, bewildered at the cold sensation. Meanwhile, the monster draws its head back and cocks it to the side, pupils glowing brighter than before. As you peer warily back at it, surprised that it seems to have retained its gentleness from the night before, it gurgles something, dropping its jaws open and closed around a distinct sound that comes out as more of a wheezing rasp than any discernible word.

“ _Hhrrrehhnd_..

Admittedly dumbfounded, you scrub the trail of slick, monster saliva off your chin and flick it off the tips of your fingers, all the while gaping up at the beast. ’ _Is it trying….to speak_?’

Distracted, your legs even stop flailing and kicking.

“Hhhfffuundssss.” it warbles.

One side of your face scrunches up, more confused that afraid at this point. ’ _Funds? Is this thing trying to mug me_?’

Wings flexing out then in, it chuffs through it’s nasal passage and tries again, this time breaking the message into two parts. “Hhffrrr-” it manages, drawing in a rattling flash of air before blowing it out again,  forming the rest of the word on a rasping exhale. “-rensss.”

At that, a gasp leaps from your chest so unexpectedly, the monster perks up and it lets out an inquisitive rumble, then repeats the sound, having garnered a reaction from you. “Rrenn..dss. O-ow!”

Casting your mind back, you try to sift through the jumble of mismatched memories until you finally land on something that clicks, some of the last few words you’d said to the monster before parting ways, words that had seemed to please it immensely that it might be driven to repeat them now.

Tentatively, you lick your lips and squint at the creature holding you. “…We’re….we're  _friends_  now,” you whisper, echoing your own words from the night before and flinching when it releases a happy croon, “Is..is that what you’re trying to say? ’ _Friends now?_ ”

“Frennsss  _ooow_!” it clamours and lifts you closer to it’s head.   
Dangling from the monster’s loose grip, you swallow nervously, yet a tiny smile quirks at the corner of your lip. The more time goes by without anything bad happening, the less apprehensive you are, and in spite of the monstrous size and grim features, it really does look somewhat endearing trying to sound out the word 'friend.’

“So, you’re real!” you needlessly state, “ _And_  you can speak!”

Seemingly a thousand times more excited than you are, it nods, so vigorously that you wouldn’t be surprised of its skull topples off.

_'This is incredible! I'm **communicating**  with either a full bodied apparition, or a real life monster!’_

Either reality is equally astounding.

As if to reaffirm the beast’s presence, you tentatively reach a hand up to its face, ready to recoil should those gleaming teeth come apart. As your palm approaches, the pupils flick from your face to your appendage. Suddenly, the pinpricks of light shrink once more.

A throaty rumble emanates from the skeletal chest and before you know what’s happening, the thumb and forefinger of its other hand snaps up to pinch your wrist, far more gently than ought to be possible for a creature of such magnitude.

Naturally startled, you attempt to pull yourself loose and wriggle your arm with increasing urgency, shoving at the bone-white fingers and then at its nose bone when the monster leans close to nuzzle at the inside of your palm, which you slam into a closed fist as a sharp pain lances across it with the added pressure.

“ _Ow_!” you exclaim, “That  _hurt_!”

The monster’s rumble turns into a quiet hiss and it leans back to peer down at you. 

Unnerved as to why your hands are stinging so much, you turn your other palm over, inspecting it closely. To your surprise, the soft skin is littered with fresh nicks and shallow grazes where the chandelier glass had cut into you when you attempted to scramble away from the monster. “Wow, I have  _not_  had much luck with my hands recently.”  

You give a start when, without warning, something wet and cold squirms insistently at the crease between your trapped thumb and forefinger. Snapping your head up, you let your jaw drop, seeing that long, slippery tongue trying to worm its way beneath your closed fist, the creature’s brow bones knitted tightly across it’s forehead. “Hey! What’s the big idea!?” you yelp, trying to squeeze your fingers together even harder to deny it access. Undeterred, it lets out an unhappy grumble and then, to your morbid curiosity, the slim, pointed end of it’s tongue thrusts hard into the gaps between your fingers, stronger than you’d anticipated. The wet appendage is cold as ice-water and behaves similarly to an octopus tentacle, prehensile and completely uninhibited by even the tightest of spaces. You can feel the slimy muscle glide with utmost ease across your skin and then it tenses, solidifying beneath your fingers and forcing them up and away from your palms. 

Helpless to do much else, you can only watch as it meticulously sets about cleaning the glass and blood off your hands with a dexterity it simply cannot achieve with its larger fingers. Precise and nearly surgical in skill, the creature digs its tongue beneath the tiny shards of glass still stuck in your cuts, flicking them out one by one and letting them fall to the floor, still tinted red with droplets of your blood. You, meanwhile, try not to squirm at the chilly, tickling back and forth of a monster’s tongue against your wounded skin. There’s something undeniably, grotesquely  _intimate_  about the whole act, made even more so by the low croons that occasionally bubble up from the spectre’s throat, not to mention its continuous effort to maintain direct eye contact. You bite the inside of your cheek and stare determinedly off to the side. 

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, the monster’s tongue coaxes your fingers apart to clean the  rest of the blood from them before retreating into it’s skull and it peers down at you with flashing pupils, releasing your hand at long last. Relieved, you tug the appendage back and flip it over to study. As expected, the damage isn’t too bad, nothing that’ll require more than to run it under a cold tap. The monster had completely cleaned it of glass and dirt. Little specks of blood spring up from the deeper cuts but you’re fairly confident they’ll stop soon enough. 

All in all, no harm done. 

A puff of frigid wind disturbs your hair and you grimace up at the ShadowBrook monster, your heart thumping as you notice it’s blazing stare is fixed solely on your un-licked hand. For a moment, you consider telling it that you can manage this one fine, but based on its actions so far, you doubt that’ll slide. “Ugh, fine,” you grumble, holding the arm out for it and trying not to roll your eyes at it’s pleased hum. “You know this is gross though, right?” 

Apparently it doesn’t care about things being ‘gross’, only about getting  _both_  of your hands free of old glass. Besides, you have to admit, the cool saliva helps to lessen the sting. 

Satisfied at last, the monster delves one last shard from the heel of your palm and grunts, backing off back to watch you shake your hands out and pull a face as strands of it’s spittle fly off in every direction.”Uhhh….. _Thanks_ , big fella. Appreciate that….” 

Evidently, it doesn’t pick up on your sarcasm, as it gives it’s wings a few, graceful beats and coos, smooth and dovelike. Leaning an elbow on it’s forefinger, you drop your chin on top of your knuckles and squint up into it’s skeletal visage. “You know,” you begin, smirking when it perks up immediately, eager to listen, “I keep calling you a monster,  _buuut_  you actually don’t seem so bad.” 

As if it ardently agrees, the monster tosses its head up a few times, grunting happily before it shoves its teeth against your shoulder, huffing out a freezing breath that sends shivers spilling over your body from head to toe.

Swallowing, nervous to have those six inch canines so close to your delicate skin, you stammer, “So – uh. I don’t think I ever caught your name?” You’re timid, yes, but undeniably filled with a spark of adventurousness. It feels very much like you’re making history right now, in this room. Eyes as round as dinner plates, you wriggle a little in the gentle grip, trying to coax the enormous spectre into a response. However, instead, you realise that its wings have stiffened and its jaw clicks shut, pupils darting to the left then back down to you, purple robes falling flat as its excitement ebbs. Immediately, you start thinking you must have said something wrong.

A heaviness settles over the room as swiftly as the drop in temperature and suddenly, you can see your breath fogging up the air in front of you once more. Though you’re certainly no expert in the behaviour of paranormal beings, even  _you_  can detect a reluctance from the monster.

Eyes narrowing, you tilt your head and peer up at it’s skull curiously. “Do…do you  _have_ a name?”

It bobs its skull up and down, regarding you with a cautious eye.

Licking your lips, you say, “Can you tell me?”

This time, a long pause precedes an even  _more_  hesitant nod, though the creature remains perfectly still, floating several feet above the marble floor. The way its brow bones are pinched together and the fingers of its free hand twitch, you’re drawn to one conclusion.   
It’s  _worried_.

But why?

After a moment’s pause, you tap its knuckle to get it to look at you again. “Why don’t you want to tell me? Are you worried I won’t like your name or something?”

Glancing at the ground, its wings droop and clack noisily against the marble and it lowers its skull in an unmistakable nod. Mindful of its forlorn demeanour, you can’t help but frown sympathetically.  “You don’t think I’ll like your name _?_ ”

Evidently frustrated, the monster growls and points a claw mere inches from your nose and sends you cross-eyed as its mouth opens and tries to force a word out.

“Sssss…..sssccc…”

In an instant, your face falls and you nervously put your hands on its pointed finger, pushing against it. “Woah, hey now. What’re you-”

It interrupts by shaking its head and at last, manages to groan, “ _Sssccaaaared_ ….” before nudging the tip of its forefinger into your chest, pressing a little ’ _oof_ ’ out of you. A few moments pass before your nose crinkles and you peer up at the beast. “You….you won’t tell me…because you think I’ll be scared? Of your  _name_?”

Just like that, the monster’s pupils blink out of existence and it angles its skull away from you.

Astonishment dancing in your eyes, you can only gawk at it, at that downturned head, the melancholy little hums that drift out of its throat every now and then, the fingers holding you so, so gently, even though just yesterday, they’d flung a steel door from its hinges with a single nudge. How could you – could anyone – be scared of this recessive creature?

Granted, it is particularly fearsome to behold, with teeth the size of your hand, a perpetually grinning skull and sockets darker than the void. But you’re old and wise enough to know that appearances seldom portray the extent of one’s nature, and for as gruesome as this spectre is to look at, its behaviour is almost…  _pleasant_.

Letting slip a quiet huff, you give the monster what you hope is a reassuring smile. “Hey. I’m not gonna be scared of your name…”

In a flash, the pupils flare to life once more and it turns to look at you uncertainly, gurgling out a question. Determined not to show it any lingering trace of trepidation, you stick your chin out and calmly state, “I’m not scared of you.”

For a while, the monster only looks at you, its brows tilted up in the centre. Then, releasing a reserved sigh, it begins to lower its hand to the floor and slowly deposits you onto your feet. The parts of you that are still wary relish in the relief washing warmly over you as soon as your feet hit solid ground.   
Before pulling away, it makes sure to gesture at you to ’ _stay_.’ The universal hand movement translates perfectly and, satisfied that you won’t bolt for the door, it lets you go, fingertips dragging over your jumper longingly as it swivels about, skull sweeping back and forth to scan the floor as though searching for something….

It’s too busy to notice the quick glance you shoot the doorway, snapping your head back in direction before it can spot you.

Eventually, it glides over an undisturbed patch of dust that isn’t covered in shards of broken glass. With a final glance over to you and a curious hum, it waits until you nod vigorously before frowning and bringing its finger down to the dusty ground.

There, it starts to draw.

’ _No_ ,’ you correct yourself, squinting and shuffling closer to its side, momentarily hurling aside your human instinct to escape.. ’ _Not drawing…Writing_!’ As you watch, enraptured, the monster traces crude letters into the dust with the very tip of a finger. Although they’re jagged and faint, you can still make them out and find yourself once again fascinated.

’D, E.’ It finishes the first letters, hesitating on the third.

“De?” you suddenly ask aloud and when you do, the monster jumps which in turn causes you to jump. Apparently, it had been concentrating hard.

Rumbling low in its chest, it shoots you a glare and goes back to tracing the third letter whilst you throw out random guesses. “Declan?” Derrick!?”

The monster chuffs.

“Dennis? Is it Dennis?”

If this thing’s name is Dennis, you’re going to throw a happy fit.

Again though, the monster’s pupils swivel up to the ceiling as it moves its hand to the next letter. Studying the new one, you feel confusion rise like a dark cloud. “ _Dea_?….What kind of name is Dea?”

The monster’s hand curls into a fist and it darts its gaze over to regard you, an exhausted sigh hissing out of the nasal passage. Whilst it watches  _you_ , its hand continues to move again.

’T’

“T?” you wonder aloud, cocking your head, “D, E, A….T….”  
You trail off with a hard gulp, finding there’s a dryness in your throat when you try to swallow.

A fretful hum from the monster falls upon deaf ears as you stare down at the word, a sinking feeling pushing at your gut and replacing the earlier confusion. With the clunky heaviness of a glacier, you turn to look at ShadowBrook’s monster.

You have a sneaking suspicion you know where this is going.

Its reluctance is evident as it traces the final letter into the thick layer of dust until at last, it draws its hand back and tucks it up next to the other one, scratching anxiously at the bandages on its wrist.

You gulp, willing your eyes to move away from the grim visage, ’ _It might not be what I think it is….But then, how many names start with ’D, e, a and t?’_

Clearly just as apprehensive as you feel, the monster continues glancing between you and the finished word. Gradually, squinting hard as though you’re gearing yourself up to look at the sun, you drag your head down to look at what’s been written at your feet…

Icy fingers of fear creep up your spine when you read the monster’s name. You’d expected something strange when you first asked, but nothing like this.   
It all makes sense. The grim reaper motif – the hooded cloak and skeletal features, the crooked wings and cold touch.

Feeling its gaze upon the side of your head, you press your elbows into your sides and try to fight the tightening of your muscles, urging yourself not to freeze up again. ’ _It’s only a name_ ,’ you tell yourself, letting out the breath you’d been holding. The monster’s face looms into your peripheral and you barely restrain a flinch as its nose bone bumps your shoulder, no doubt trying to coax movement from you.

Finally you find the will to tear your eyes off the floor and fix them on its gleaming pupils that watch you unwaveringly. Licking your lips, you take a single, involuntary step backwards towards the door and whisper, voice quaking with adrenaline, “ _Death_?”


End file.
